ZIP code 52242

ZIP 52242 is a small town in Johnson County, Iowa, with 4,412 residents counted in the Census American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates, which places it #152 of 970 ranked by population — larger than 84% of them. The median age here is 19.2 years against 39.1 nationally, a distinctly younger profile, typical of places with students, military posts or a fast-growing family population. At this population the ACS sample is small, so the margin of error around every dollar figure below is wide — treat the numbers as a band, not a point, and expect them to move between annual releases without the place itself changing.

Households in ZIP 52242 earn a median of not published a year. The median is the midpoint household, not an average, so a handful of very high earners cannot drag it upward the way they distort a mean. Poverty reaches 44.7% of residents here, well above the 12.4% national rate, which is the single clearest signal in this dataset that median income here is carried by a narrow band of households.

The typical owner-occupied home in ZIP 52242 is valued at not published, while median gross rent runs not published a month. 0% of occupied homes are owner-occupied versus 65% nationally, a renter-majority market, so rent figures matter more here than the home-value line. The rent line includes utilities paid by the tenant, a definition worth remembering when comparing it against a landlord's quoted rate.

A median age of 19.2 means a large student or early-career population; income medians in places like this understate household resources, since many residents are supported from outside the address.

The Census withheld household income, home value, gross rent for ZIP 52242 because the sample was too thin to publish at this geography. Those values were suppressed at the source, not lost in our dataset, and we do not model a replacement. Everything else on this page comes straight from the ACS 2019-2023 ACS 5-year tables.

ZIP 52242 is tabulated inside Johnson County, Iowa, one of 13 ZIP areas the Census publishes for that county and 970 across Iowa. Population sits in the small-town band, typically one main street plus the addresses that feed into it. County assignment on this page follows the largest share of the ZIP's land area, which matters where a delivery route crosses a county line: mail addressed to 52242 can be handled by a post office in a neighbouring county even though the tabulation area is filed here.

Against its own county, 52242 reports a median household income of not published. Owner-occupied homes are valued at a median of not published. Rent is reported gross — the contract amount plus tenant-paid utilities — at not published a month, which is why it reads higher than the advertised rent on a listing for the same unit.

Iowa charges 6% statewide, and local governments overlapping 52242 may add county, city or special-district levies on top. We publish the state floor for this ZIP rather than guessing a combined figure, because ZIP boundaries and taxing-district boundaries were drawn for different purposes and do not line up.

Everything above comes from the Census Bureau American Community Survey 2019-2023 ACS 5-year estimates for this ZIP Code Tabulation Area, with sales tax rates traced to the state revenue agency. Five-year estimates pool sixty months of responses, so they are stable enough to compare 52242 with its neighbours but always trail the current year, and any value the Census suppressed for sample size is shown as unpublished rather than filled in with a model.